Giant panda reclining in cloudy hills eating bamboo, European bison picking their way through gloomy and lichen-draped forests and Cape mountain zebra roaming arid mountains. Ideas of how and where these species live are fixed in the public imagination, in conservation practice and even in some species’ names – but they may simply be stereotypes.

Species stereotypes can develop when research is carried out on a small, biased sample that isn’t representative of a species’ entire natural range. They often give an overly narrow, or just plain wrong, idea of what is needed for survival and breeding.

This problem is particularly acute after range declines, as something can’t be studied where it no longer exists. The idea that the giant panda is so often depicted as eating bamboo may be an artefact of them being restricted to “ecologically suboptimal refuges” rather than a quirk of evolution. In an ideal world, pandas would use a wider range of forest types and have a varied diet much more similar to other bears.

What this means for conservation is that protected areas may not be ideal for the species they are supposedly there to protect.

Similar to the common assumption that pandas prefer to live only on bamboo, there has long been a belief among conservationists that the critically endangered........

© The Conversation